In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an English comedian, actor and conspiracy theorist, Russell Brand (@rustyrockets). He's best-known for his tendency to spread conspiracy theories and for his anti-establishment (well, basically their just anti-US/UK policy) views.
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Now, when I say that Brand is a conspiracy theorist, I mean it. It seems that he believes pretty much EVERY conspiracy theory out there, including The Great Reset and "Klaus Schwab taking over the world through WEF", "microchips in vaccines", "Multipolar World",...
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US and CIA-led coup d'etat in Ukraine, and NATO's expansion and proxy war against Russia. Brand's a fan of David Icke, whose worldview contains inter-dimensional, shapeshifting reptilians which have hijacked the earth.
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Icke suggests that various public figures belong to the Babylonian Brotherhood, a fascist group that tries to establish New World Order by suppressing freedom of speech. He also endorses a fabricated, anti-Semitic scripture called " The Protocols of the Elders of Zion".
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When discussing the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, Brand clearly has picked a side - based on Russell, the only culprits of the war are the US and the "military industrial complex". And most probably Klaus Schwab and his evil association known as the World Economic Forum...
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The basic argument is that everything is infiltrated & everyone is controlled by the "deep state",thus making any kind of democratic efforts pointless. I mean,one of the title of his videos is "Prince Harry Saga – The TRUTH About The Deep State?" (with Clare Daly by the way) 6/18
As too many actors and actresses on social media, Brand has a huge following: he has over 6 million subscribers of YouTube and over 1 million over on Rumble. On Twitter, he has a whopping 11 million followers, even though it's mainly used for channeling people...
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...to his YT and Rumble podcasts. This makes him one of the biggest outlets for conspiratorial content, and he's only surpassed by maybe Elon Musk, Joe Rogan and Donald Trump. After YouTube took down one of Brand's COVID-19 themed videos in...
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..Sep, 2022, he moved to less-censored Rumble. Worried about losing that sweet, sweet YouTube money, Brand even produced an apology video but eventually took it down and said that "we made an error, in my opinion a relatively small error, and we are being ...
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...penalised,and for me that looks like censorship". As an anti-capitalist, Russell evidently seems to worry about losing his main source of income, probably coming from Samsung and Coca Cola ads. You can also buy his T-shirts with cool anti-establishment statements for as..10/18
..low as 25,99 £. I mean, the man even monetized the famous 12 steps from AA/NA with his 2017 book, Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions.
Watching Russell's podcasts is extremely exhausting, they are an endless stream of rambling about conspiracy theories and how the...
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...mainstream media is quiet about them. But I did it, so you don't have to.
On his show, he's interviewed pro-Kremlin propagandists such as RT-funded Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Jimmy Dore and Seymour Hersh.
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As is tradition, they barely mention Russia, mostly talking about the corruption both in the US and in Ukraine. In Mar 2022, Brand published a video titled "You've Been LIED To About Why Ukraine War Began". The video to date has garnered 3,1 million views, and in it Brand.. 13/18
...suggests, right after he's advertised his stand-up gigs, that the Revolution of Dignity was actually a US-backed coup d'etat. He bases this information on heavily biased op-ed by Branko Marcetic. In said op-ed, Marcetic suggested that the "coup" was funded by the US...
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...because John McCain shook hands with Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok and Victoria Nuland gave out sandwiches to both the protestors and the police, and said "Fuck the EU" during a phone call.
Brand also appeared as a commentator on a fellow anti-capitalist Tucker ...
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...Carlson's show, apparently because he believes "change is possible". The Tucker Carlson, who was so worried about the stock price going down that he had a dissenting co-worker fired. Brand was "surprised" on how many things they "actually agreed on", and for some...
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... reason this whole rant reminded me of a horseshoe.
To conclude, Brand is utilizing his career as a comedian and actor to spread wild conspiracy theories in his podcast with clickbait titles like "Why Zelensky REALLY Wants US Tanks". If there's something he's learned..
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..from the American media culture,it's that fear sells: his rants about the end of days and deep state corruption are often seasoned with ads where he sells his stand-up gig or his mugs and T-shirts with corny slogans. You know, grifting and fearmongering for a hefty profit.18/18
In this 9th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss “legitimate military targets”. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine, with no declaration of war, hiding behind a “special military operation”. Yet vatniks & useful idiots pretend Russia has any legitimate or lawful targets in Ukraine.
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Russia started the war in 2014 by seizing Crimea with unmarked soldiers, “little green men”. Russians have been waging an undeclared, illegal war with endless war crimes ever since, whether it’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children with genocidal intent…
… the concentration camps for Ukrainians under occupation, conscripting Ukrainians from occupied territories, or the terrorist, deliberate bombing of civilians, including their infamous “double tap” strikes.
So no, Russia does not have any “legitimate targets” in Ukraine.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American streamer and millionaire. He’s best known for his champagne socialism, rabid criticism of the US and Israel, support for the Soviet Union and for Chinese and Russian invasions, and for mistreating his dog.
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Born in 1991, Piker grew up in a privileged and well-connected environment. His father held senior roles at big corporations and his uncle, Cenk Uygur, is the founder of The Young Turks media network. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers, a top-tier university in New Jersey.
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His main activity and primary source of income consists of hours-long livestreams on Twitch where he comments on news and yells at videos. He also keeps his dog in place the whole time with a shock collar.
What you see happening here is coordinated strategic communication by the Trump cult. Elon’s baby mama and former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair explained this ecosystem in a long video. They have built platforms where people can find narratives to spread and get paid for doing so.
Even though the system technically breaks the platform's ToS, this is perfectly fine for @nikitabier and the rest of the X crew, because Elon pays their salaries and this is part of his election interference machinery.
If you wanna know how the system works, read this:
Here’s Ashley’s video, where she explains how the system works. She was immediately attacked by various MAGA actors, which suggests that what she said hit a nerve.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician. He’s best known for rising to power at the height of the Greek debt crisis, not solving anything but endearing himself to the left, and using his fame to promote Russian imperialism.
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Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis studied economics in the UK and built an academic career in Australia, the US, and Europe. His early work focused on game theory, political economy, and critiques of capitalism.
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Presenting himself as the fearless, unorthodox economist willing to confront the EU’s “neoliberal” elites, he rose to prominence during Greece’s debt crisis. At its height in 2015, he was appointed finance minister under the left-wing Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.
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NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”. 2/7
To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.
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War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.
But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:
Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.